Gloria Allred backs out of Trump lawsuit... and say what?

Attorney Gloria Allred says shes no longer representing a former contestant on The Apprentice who has accused President Donald Trump of unwanted kissing and groping. The decision came days after a New York court said Zervos could proceed with a defamation lawsuit against the Republican president. Zervos says Trump hurt her reputation by publicly denying her claims that he subjected her to unwanted advances.

Say what again? She accused him, he denied it, and she sues for defamation?

Teaching Jihad

On Tuesday, police in Italy arrested the leader of an Islamic cultural center on financial and terror charges. Police tracked down his social media profile, finding support for the Islamic State (ISIS), along with videos of him teaching children as young as 4 years old to wield weapons against "unbelievers."

Congress subpoenas Rosenstein to produce documents on Clinton

Senior staff on both sides of the street have met on this and the FBI is getting called on the carpet. The Attorney General is angry with how slow the process has moved when it comes to requests from Congress to the FBI. He's told Wray that the pace is unacceptable and that if the FBI needs to double the number of people working on this, then that's what they need to do, but he is done seeing the Department criticized for the FBI's slow walking of requests from Congress like the last administration when these requests should be a top priority.

FBI Director Christopher Wray promptly doubled the number of FBI agents assigned to the task.

Yeah, about that last bit... we need a second special counsel. I do not trust Obama appointees to investigate and prosecute other Obama appointees. Nothing against Huber; I don't know him. But we need someone with no loyalty to the Obama White House for this.

Al Sharpton's brother charged with murder after marching against guns

Rev. Al Sharptons half-brother was charged with murder in a Sunday shooting death in Alabama after participating in Saturdays anti-gun March For Our Lives, according to a report.

Kenneth Glasgow, 52, was arrested along with another man after Breunia Jennings, 23, was shot in the head in Dothan, Ala. Authorities said Glasgow, an ex-convict, was the driver of the car linked to Jennings death. The passenger of the car Jamie Townes, 26, was also arrested and is reportedly the alleged shooter, the Dothan Eagle reported.

If it wasn't for double standards, the left would have no standards at all.

North Korea commits to denuclearization

On Wednesday, China said that it secured a commitment from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to denuclearize the Korean peninsula during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

It is our consistent stand to be committed to denuclearization on the peninsula, in accordance with the will of late President Kim Il Sung and late General Secretary Kim Jong Il, Kim said, according to Xinhua.

The issue of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula can be resolved, if South Korea and the United States respond to our efforts with goodwill, create an atmosphere of peace and stability while taking progressive and synchronous measures for the realization of peace, Kim continued.

Is it news that Kim is announcing this commitment while in China meeting with their leadership? Did China finally read Kim the riot act?

I wouldn't call this a done deal until we see if he tries it again under the next president. But it's promising, and applying economic pressure to China may well result in an enforceable agreement.

Using foreign spies to influence elections

What we reported is this. A source with a record of proven reliability over many years overheard FBI agents venting about John Brennan, the former head of the CIA, using British intelligence agents to spy on the Trump campaign. American contractors were also used. The British used American equipment. They had an extensive spying network here in America, using the twelfth floor of a building in Crystal City, Virginia and a building in San Antonio. Moreover, Brennan was not the only one who knew about the spying. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was another, and still more senior officials in the Obama Administration were aware of it. I am told that James B. Comey and Andrew McCabe were also aware of the surveillance of Trump. They had tried to get FISA warrants for snooping on Trumps associates but were turned down, though they would later get a warrant to spy on Carter Page. So Brennan turned to the British. If they wanted to keep their spying a secret they were pretty sloppy, but then they thought they could afford to be sloppy. They knew that Hillary was going to win.

As I say, spying on American citizens one would think would be opposed by all sides in America today. One would expect a consensus to exist at least on this. But it does not appear to be the case. Members of the left have uttered not a peep. Even the ACLU is quiet. Yet there is one outspoken civil libertarian left, President Trump. He can notify his Department of Justice to take action. In fact, he can even release a Tweet. It is time for all defenders of the free society to be heard. American elections are best conducted without the involvement of our intelligence agencies. Not even her majestys agents should be invited in.

The involvement of British intelligence in the 2016 election in Hillary's favor, above and beyond Steele the ex-agent and his dossier, has been quietly known for quite some time. At least one agency head has already resigned shortly after Trump won, presumably on this issue (his time at the head of his agency was very short).

I expect this issue has already been discussed on diplomatic channels and will probably be handled quietly but firmly.

Obama campaign in legal trouble for Facebook scraping?

After the Cambridge Analytica story broke, an Obama campaign staffer, Carol Davidsen, tweeted about how "Facebook was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn't stop us once they realized what we were doing." By "whole social graph," she presumably meant profiles of every Facebook user in the U.S.

She went on to tell the Washington Post that "We would ask permission to basically scrape your profile, and also scrape your friends, basically anything that was available to scrape. We scraped it all."

She also said that Facebook officials came to the campaign offices after the election recruiting Obama's tech team, and that "they were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn't have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side."

That ban, he says, doesn't just include cash, but anything of value. "In other words, corporations cannot provide federal candidates with free services of any kind."

He goes on, if "Facebook gave the Obama campaign free access to this type of data when it normally does not do so for other entities  or usually charges for such access  then Facebook would appear to have violated the federal ban on in-kind contributions by a corporation. And the Obama campaign may have violated the law by accepting such a corporate contribution."

Considering Facebook's stock price is based almost entirely on their possession of this information and their ability to monetize it, it will be very difficult for the Obama campaign to write off the contribution as without value. Mind you, Obama probably won't be running again for anything. But the precedent will matter.

Maryland passes automatic voter registration

Marylands Democratic-controlled legislature on Wednesday approved a measure to automatically register eligible citizens to vote when they interact with certain state agencies. Any Marylander who interacts with the state's Motor Vehicle Administration, health-care exchange or social services offices would be signed up to vote unless they decline.

In other words, any time a felon or illegal alien signs up for a driver's license or some of those sweet, sweet welfare benefits, they will automatically be entered on the voter rolls regardless of whether they are citizens or eligible to vote.

NAACP files nonsense lawsuit against Trump census plans

The NAACP is suing President Trump and his administration for failing to take steps to fully count minorities during the upcoming 2020 census, saying that undercounting will cause minority communities to be underfunded. The lawsuit calls on the court to require that the Bureau of the Census "propose and implement, subject to this Court's approval and monitoring, a plan to ensure that hard-to-count populations will be actually enumerated in the decennial census."

So, in short, the NAACP has filed a lawsuit based on ... nothing. Speculation. Completly baseless hyperbole about minority populations being somehow "harder to count" and this translating, somehow, into direct harm that the courts should address... preemptively? By supervising the work of the census before any problems are identified or harm is done?

Any honest judge will toss this out of his courtroom for lack of standing.

Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz announced today that, in response to requests from the Attorney General and Members of Congress, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) will initiate a review that will examine the Justice Departments and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) compliance with legal requirements, and with applicable DOJ and FBI policies and procedures, in applications filed with the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) relating to a certain U.S. person. As part of this examination, the OIG also will review information that was known to the DOJ and the FBI at the time the applications were filed from or about an alleged FBI confidential source. Additionally, the OIG will review the DOJs and FBIs relationship and communications with the alleged source as they relate to the FISC applications.

If circumstances warrant, the OIG will consider including other issues that may arise during the course of the review.

This is, I think, the IG's way of telling people to stop calling for a second special counsel because he's got this issue under control. Sessions has already referred to a prosecutor working with the IG from outside of Washington. We haven't heard much about or from this prosecutor yet, but it seems likely we will.

I'd still be more comfortable with a second special prosecutor, I think. I don't trust FBI or DOJ to investigate themselves even with an outsider running it. But that's not what we've got for now, and I'll judge by results when we start to see them.

More text messages suggest FBI colluded with White House

Newly uncovered text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page suggest a possible coordination between high-ranking officials at the Obama White House, CIA, FBI, Justice Department and former Senate Democratic leadership in the early stages of the investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to GOP congressional investigators on Wednesday.

The investigators say the information provided to Fox News strongly suggests coordination between former President Barack Obamas Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, then-Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, and CIA Director John Brennan  which they say would contradict the Obama administrations public stance about its hand in the process.

Prager university loses initial censorship lawsuit against Youtube

In a decision late Monday, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh said a nonprofit run by conservative radio talk show host Dennis Prager failed to show that YouTube infringed its free speech rights by placing age restrictions on its content.

The plaintiff, Prager University, said YouTubes animus toward its political identity and viewpoint led it to curb access to videos, including through its Restricted Mode setting, on such topics as abortion, gun rights, Islam and terrorism, despite its stated promise of neutrality.

But the judge said Google and YouTube, both units of Mountain View, California-based Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), did not qualify as state actors subject to the First Amendment by creating a public forum for speech.

This one was doomed by its basic construction. Youtube is not a state actor subject to the first amendment. But another approach may work.

Car crash at Broward Sheriffs office may have been terrorism

What would cause 34-year-old mother Lasandra Johnson to attempt to turn her red Toyota Camry into a car bomb targeting local law enforcement? She had been in trouble with the law before. Was this a way to get back at authority? Or was it related to her newfound association with a radical mosque? Given the Islamic Center of South Floridas ties to extremism, the latter is a very likely scenario.

Shortly before 11:30 am, on Monday, March 21st, Lasandra Lavette Johnson drove a red Toyota Camry loaded with accelerants and a full tank of gas into the Pembroke Pines, Florida district substation of the Broward Sheriffs Office (BSO). Following impact, a fire erupted from the car. According to a worker on the scene, Johnson was engulfed in flames. Johnson was hospitalized with burn wounds and later charged with arson and burglary. News reports about the attack did not mention the fact that Johnson was a devout Muslim, thus omitting a potentially crucial aspect of the story.

Sounds like terrorism to me, though the target selection appears irrational and media-driven. But then, how rational is it to commit a terrorist attack while living in the richest nation on earth?

Inhofe introduces legislation to send captured aliens home

Sen. James Inhofe said he will introduce legislation aimed at preventing illegal immigrants who make it over the U.S. border from disappearing into the country due to overcrowded detention centers.

Inhofe said U.S. detention facilities release thousands of illegal immigrants into the United States with a court date with an immigration judge, and they almost never return to attend.

What they should do is send them back to the country they came from until their court date, the Oklahoma Republican told the Washington Examiner. But as it is now, they just give them a court date and they turn them over to church groups and others and they just disappear and they end up in our society.

This seems so obvious that I wonder why we haven't been doing it all along.

But Senator? Call me back when you can get your legislation to 60 votes. Maybe you can put it in the next omnibus.

Never let anyone tell you that no one wants to take your guns. I'm not going to bother quoting it, or even linking directly to it. I will, however, thank Justice Stevens for reminding us that yes, Democrats do want to take our guns. Not "some of them", not "just the military ones", not "just the ones you don't need for hunting", not "just handguns". They want them all, and they are willing to remove a core part of the document that founded our nation in order to do so.

I say to Justice Stevens the same thing the Spartans told the Persians, the same thing our forefathers told the British crown: Come and take them!

An assault weapons ban for the IRS

This week, our organization at OpenTheBooks.com released our findings in an editorial at The Wall Street Journal that quantified the growing federal arsenal. The number of non-military federal officers with arrest and firearm authority (200,000+) now exceeds the number of U.S. Marines (182,000). Spending on guns, ammo and military-style equipment at 67 federal agencies  including 53 regulatory, administrative agencies amounted to $1.48 billion between 2006-2014.

The IRS gun-locker is an example of this growing federal firepower. Nearly $11 million was spent on guns, ammo and military-style equipment for 2,316 special agents during this period. The IRS stockpile includes pump-action and semi-automatic shotguns with buckshot and slugs; and semi-automatic AR-15 rifles (S&W M&P 15) and military-style H&K 416 rifles.

The recent growth of the federal arsenal begs the questions: Just who are the feds planning to battle?

Seattle area man arrested for mailing potentially destructive devices

The FBI has taken a Seattle-area man into custody in connection with five packages containing possibly "destructive devices" that were sent to sensitive military and intelligence installations in and near D.C.

Thanh Cong Phan, 43, of Everett, Wash., was arrested at his home Monday and was scheduled to make his first court appearance this afternoon.

Astroturf

Its a strange political fact, but nearly every major anti-gun group has been a front group. The NRA is maligned 24/7 and yet its completely obvious whom it represents. Despite the efforts to tie it to everyone from firearms manufacturers to the Russians (if you cant tie any random Republican thing to the Russians these days, you wont be working at the Washington Post or CNN for very long), it represents its five million members. Anti-gun groups tend to represent shadowy networks.

Read the whole thing. This was a prepared, professional movement just waiting for a school shooting to provide the blood to dance in.

This explains a lot

In 1983, the Supreme Court decided Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association v. State Farm Mutual that rescinding any regulation issued an agency is obligated to supply a reasoned analysis for the change beyond that which may be required when an agency does not act in the first instance.

The outcome was that it is much more difficult to rescind an existing regulation than it is to either modify it or never have issued it in the first place, leaving every single regulatory rescission subject to judicial review.

Ultimately, the rescinding agency has to argue not only that rescinding the regulation in question is rational based on the statutory scheme, but prove that enacting it was irrational to begin with.

So it's illegal (according to judicial fiat) to simply remove a regulation because the administration has changed and the new administration favors freedom instead of regulating everything? It's judicially easier to add a new regulation than to remove one? This explains so much of what has happened to government since 1983, if true...

Medical costs are absurd, unrealistic, and cannot continue

My 92-year-old mothers first nursing home bill arrived yesterday: Calculated on a yearly basis, it will be $123,120 PLUS $148,920 for round-the-clock sitters (required by nursing home as a condition to accepting my mother) PLUS assorted other charges including $4.56 for two sticks of lip balm. (And in case you havent heard, neither Medicare nor Blue Cross/Blue Shield covers nursing home care beyond a certain number of days after a hospital stay, and long-term care insurance pays for only about a quarter of the above. Plan well for your dotage.)

As Glenn Reynolds is fond of saying: What can't go on, won't. Ordinary people cannot pay nearly three hundred thousand dollars a year for nursing home care, not even with some insurance or Medicare to help. And so they won't. Whether that means nursing homes lower their prices, or lower-cost options emerge, or people simply go without.

House to push for balanced budget amendment?

House Republicans will push for a balanced budget amendment after they return from recess, according to a report from Politico.

The report follows the passage of the $1.3 trillion omnibus package to fund the government through September.

That bill was ripped by conservatives in the House and Senate, and President Trump vowed to never approve a similar bill again.

Too little, too late comes to mind... unless they actually pass it, and the Senate likewise, and the States ratify. So I'm cynical this is just a ploy for votes to make up for the omnibus, but if it passes I'll give credit where due.

Video of Austin bomber

Hours after a serial bomber blew himself up as authorities closed in, investigators discovered that the homegrown Texan who had killed two people and terrorized Austin for 19 days had left behind a list of future targets and a 25-minute "confession" on his phone, officials said Wednesday.

However, Conditt's motive remains unknown, and officials suspect that "we are never going to be able to put a rationale behind these acts," said Austin Police Chief Brian Manley.

In Conditt's confession video, "he does not at all mention anything about terrorism, nor does he mention anything about hate," Manley said. "Instead it is the outcry of a very challenged young man talking about challenges in his personal life that led him to this point."

Funny, he has a specific target list and his video talks about personal problems, but they don't know his motivation?